2023-11-15 19:51:32
Readers of Poutine. A vision of power, published in France in 2016 (1), did not know it: the author, German journalist Hubert Seipel, benefited, for this work, from the support of a Russian oligarch close to the Kremlin. He signed a “sponsorship contract” financed by Alexeï Mordashov, the main shareholder of Severstal, Russia’s leading steel group, for an undisclosed amount.
He also received €600,000 from the same oligarch, in two installments, in 2018 and 2019, paid via a company based in the Virgin Islands, for the writing of a second book published in Germany in 2021, not translated into French, under the title Putin’s power. Why Europe needs Russia.
This is one of the revelations of an investigation carried out by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (Icij), which studied more than 3.6 million documents from financial services companies based in Cyprus, from which it was able to know. Two hundred and seventy journalists from 55 countries worked together to analyze these documents. This survey is published in France by the dailyThe world and by Radio France channels.
It shows that banks on the island of Cyprus, a member state of the European Union, massively helped Russian nationals under sanctions to hide assets, even after the start of the war in Ukraine. It also shows that the PwC firm, a global consulting giant, contributed to these operations.
German public television considers lawsuits
The revelation of the payments made to Hubert Seipel caused strong emotion in Germany, because the journalist, aged 73, is known there as an expert on Russia, author of several documentaries, some of which have won prizes. He notably produced a portrait of President Putin in 2012, then obtained an exclusive interview with the Russian head of state two years later.
When promoting his books, he boasted of being the only Western journalist to benefit from privileged access to the master of the Kremlin. Asked by The GuardianHubert Seipel attacked those who try to describe him as “a sort of Kremlin agent of influence”ensuring that you always have “describes the world as it is and not as it should be”.
But German public television, which produced and broadcast his films, does not see it that way. Reacting to these revelations, the president of the NDR channel indicated in a press release that he was considering legal action: “We suspect that we, and therefore our public, have been deliberately misled. We will now look into the matter further and are considering legal action.”he writes.
Influence operation
The two books were published after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, as the Kremlin stepped up communications operations to gain support for Western opinions. The journalist argued that his second book was the product of eight years of work and research. But he does not appear to have informed his publisher of these payments.
In 2021, at the time of the release of the second book, when he was a guest on a radio show and asked if he had received money from Russia for this work, Hubert Seipel vigorously denied, launching: “Are you losing your mind?” No, this is not the case ! »
Two years later, he had to acknowledge the existence of these payments, even if he claims to have retained his editorial freedom. But €600,000 remains well above the sum usually paid by a publisher to an author for writing a book.
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